BANGALORE, March 18 (Reuters) - Flint Energy Services Ltd’s quarterly profit fell more than analysts expected and the oilfield services company forecast weak 2011 revenue, hurt by project delays, sending its shares down as much as 7 percent.

The Calgary, Alberta-based company expects 2011 revenue to be flat due to delays in contract awards on recently announced oil sands projects, while lower activity in its oil sands group in the second half of last year hurt revenue. In 2010, it reported revenue of C$1.78 billion.

“We waited and waited patiently for our customers to get organized ... A lot of it didn’t -- the projects just did not get started in fourth quarter,” Chief Executive Bill Lingard said on a conference call with analysts.

“It did pick up substantially in February, but certainly not to the levels we wanted.”

Flint, which has operations in the United States and Canada, also said it will raise the price of its services in Canada, where it gets about 80 percent of its revenue, to protect margins, which are being squeezed by high fuel prices and wages.

Flint’s results are in contrast to those of its peers like Ensign Energy Services Inc and industry leaders such as Schlumberger Ltd and Halliburton Co , whose results were driven by a rising drilling activity.

WEAK REVENUE

The delayed projects are expected to continue hurting the construction and installation of processing plants offered by Flint’s facility infrastructure segment, which contributes about a third of total revenue, till the latter part of this year.

However, the company expects to win projects from MEG Energy , Conoco Phillips , Canadian Natural and Imperial Oil .

It also expects to continue to get projects from Suncor Energy , which has started spending on its oilsand projects.

Flint also expects its production and maintenance services segment, which comprises more than 40 percent of revenue, to be weak.

“When I look at the first couple of months of the year, we are not seeing, in the U.S. or Canada, (the) robust activity that we hoped to see in production services,” Lingard said.